Cenas Portuguesas, Op.9 (c1895)

Cantiga d’Amor

Chula

Valsa Caprichosa

Vianna da Motta is remembered above all as a pianist. He was a pupil of Scharwenka, Liszt, and Bülow and is himself credited with having developed the Portuguese school of piano playing during his nineteen years as director of the Lisbon Conservatoire. But he was also a conductor and, as befits a friend and colleague of Busoni, a generally thoughtful musician, writer and composer.

Bearing in mind what is known of him as a pianist - there are some distinguished Chopin, Liszt and Busoni recordings - one might expect his own music to be late-romantic virtuoso stuff little different from that of many of his contemporaries. In fact, while some of it is certainly late-romantic and virtuoso in style, there is also a strong, deliberately cultivated Portuguese element in it. Even the heroic Ballada Op.16 - which was included in Sequeira Costa’s recital in the Wigmore Hall three years ago - was inspired by Portuguese folk song. And if the Ballada qualifies Vianna da Motta as a small-scale Portuguese Liszt some of his less ambitious pieces, like the Cenas Portuguesas Op.9, qualify him as a somewhat less than life-size Portuguese Grieg.

The second series of Cenas Portuguesas Op.18 is technically more adventurous but the earlier set is comparatively, and appropriately, modest in its treatment of folk material. Like so many of Grieg’s piano pieces, these “Portuguese Scenes” are above all a celebration of folk song and dance. While the virtuoso pianist shows through in the middle section of Cantiga d’Amor (Love Song), where an assertive new theme in G minor experiences a dramatic development, the advocate of Portuguese song and its characteristic melodic decoration makes his presence most engagingly felt in the G major outer sections. Chula retains so much of the identity of the popular dance form that when Portugal was going through its democratic revolution in 1974 it was broadcast regularly on state television as a symbol of renewed national pride. Again there is a more challenging middle section, this one featuring double octaves in a brief burst of bravura energy, but the outer sections present the chula dance rhythms in robust instrumental colouring and bagpipe harmonies. The Portuguese element is less obvious in the Valsa Caprichosa but it is no less popular in tone for that, and no less entertaining either.